Spending More Time With Family
by A Damned Scientist
Summary: A couple of years post-PKW, Rygel finds he wants a vacation from being Dominar.


**Spending More Time With Family (G)**

Post PKW Fluff. Set a couple of cycles later.

It seems I've written a lot of darkness and smut this last year, so it was nice to write something that most definitely is neither. Also, my muse has been on holiday for a couple of monens, my longest writing break yet, so it was good to ease back in with a more gentle piece.

Disclaimer: Farscape is the property of someone else. I'm merely paying homage and not doing this for personal gain.

Thanks: To Vinegardog for the beta

Words: 1848

**Spending More Time With Family**

Dominar Rygel the XVIth flicked through the top layer of the reports littering his desk. There was intelligence on the usual agitations from the Bishanites, bureaucratic ramblings over the many reconstruction programmes he had instituted, reports on the dissent over the new tax regimes he had implemented to pay for the parlous state in which the traitor Bishan had left the Empire. It had been 20 monens since he had returned from exile and it was still just one frelling thing after another. He'd have thought that after a while things would have gotten a little easier. Maybe, in the old days, before his deposition, it might have been so. He might have been enjoying the trappings of power once more. But he had changed in his time away. Sometimes, in his more cynical moments, he wondered if it was truly for the better.

Being Dominar had been much more fun back when he hadn't taken it so seriously. What was it Crichton said? Ah yes: "Be careful what you wish for."

Rygel sighed in resignation as one of his flunkies entered his office chamber, bearing another sheaf of flimsies for his attention. Frell. This was getting ridiculous.  
Rygel ignored his visitor and turned his attention to the computer terminal on his desk and started searching, scrolling though entries, looking for something.

After nearly a tenth of an arn had passed, Chamberlain Trisk, still hovering patiently on the other side of the dominar's desk, finally summoned the courage to clear his throat.

Rygel continued to ignore him for just long enough to illustrate who was the master and who the servant.

"Chamberlain Tisk," Rygel looked up, peering across the desk and deliberately mispronouncing the name. "I have been checking through reports of events in the Dolbein system…" Trisk frowned in confusion. Rygel knew full well that he was trying to think what might have caught the dominar's attention in such an insignificant place. Rygel had no intention of telling him. "Why did you not tell me of these important events?" Rygel swiped an angry backhand at the screen before turning it towards the hapless chamberlain for a microt to show him the screen, but not the content on it.

"Prepare the Morning Glory. I leave for Dolbein this evening. The chamberlain's jaw flapped, too obsequious to ask for explanation. As Trisk hovered backwards out of the room, Rygel reflected that sometimes being absolute monarch had its advantages.

xxxxxxx

"It's just a pleasure planet!" Thol Platus, Captain of Rygel's bodyguard unwisely exclaimed. An embarrassed silence fell over the command deck of the Morning Glory. Rygel ignored the soldier and continued to stare at the blue-green orb in question through his yacht's main viewing portal.

Eventually Chamberlain Trisk sidled up to the Dominar and tentatively ventured an opinion. "Your Supreme Eminence, all stations report that nothing remarkable is happening down there. Nothing at all…. Perhaps, if I may be so bold, umm, if you could help your loyal subjects to…."

"This is the planet. Prepare my shuttle, We… I… am going down."

"Very well, your Eminence, I will inform the Governor and…." Trisk simpered.

"You will do no such thing. I shall be travelling unannounced!" He glared at the Chamberlain for a microt, anticipating the lackey's next assumptions. "And alone!"

"But, Dominar….. Why?"

"Matters of state. I am Dominar Rygel the XVIth. I don't need to tell you. Prepare my shuttle!" Rygel huffed, spun his thronesled on its axis and swept imperiously from the command centre.

XXXXXX

It had taken all of Rygel's considerable powers of persuasion to convince Captain Platus that no one knew him on this planet and so it would be safe to let him have a little space. In the end he had had to resort to ordering his bodyguards to keep their distance. He could tell that Platus was not happy complying, no doubt concerned for his own future should anything happen to the dominar. Rygel, on the other hand, recognised that if someone really wanted to assassinate him here there was little that half a dozen Hynerian soldiers would be able to do to prevent it. It was almost worth the risk to be free of his usual suffocating halo of minions for a while.

The long sandy beach he had headed straight towards upon landing was dotted with vacationers. The air was pleasantly warm: sufficient to obviate the need for clothing, but not so much that it would be uncomfortable for Sebaceans. Indeed, the people that he could see were mostly Sebaceanoid, with the notable exception of his conspicuous Hynerian guards hiding inexpertly under trees and in the surf. From time to time a head would bob up or out and then slowly return to cover. However, no one remarked on or bothered the single elderly Hynerian taking in the sea air. That was not to say that his presence went entirely unnoticed. A small, dark haired boy toddled up to him, oblivious, as only a small child could be, to the fact that Sebaceans and Hynerians scarcely mixed.

"Arky!" The youngster greeted him enthusiastically.

"Where're your parents?" Rygel responded with a softness that surprised even himself.

The toddler blinked his impossibly blue eyes and grinned, revealing two tiny teeth. He pointed to a single figure, reclining some 100 motras down the beach: a Sebacean woman with long, black hair and a very visible late-term pregnancy bump lay on a towel. She was watching them with an easy smile, shielding her eyes from the sun with one visor-like hand, despite the large, tinted eye lenses she wore.

She seemed to recognize the dominar and, seeing the boy pointing her way, waved to them, beckoning them closer. One small hand slipped into another and the two males, one shuffling one hovering, made their way across the beach towards her.

"That bump looks good on you, Peacekeeper," he remarked, without hint of malice in his use of the usually derogatory title, to the obviously pregnant woman as he came within a motra or two. The child broke free of his hand and ran excitedly into his mother's embrace. She hugged the boy and grinned back at Rygel, who had now slipped from his thronesled to walk the last few denches between them. The sand was deliciously soft between his toes.

"Better than it would on me," he added with a wink as the child broke away from his mother and began to play with a small toy that vaguely resembled a Hynerian. She chuckled in reply and then, with a sigh, shifted slightly on her towel, trying to settle into a more comfortable position. "You're looking well, Aeryn." He added.

"It's good to see you too, Rygel. You should have told us you were coming," she remarked, her voice devoid of any tone of reproach.

"I wasn't sure you… well wasn't sure," he began, then decided against revealing his fear of rejection. "And besides, I didn't want any of those probaktos around me to know what I was planning. They'd have only tried to stop me." He huffed and settled down onto the sand beside her.

"How have you been?" She asked once he was as comfortable as his old bones were going to let him get.

"Pff. I need a… what would Crichton call it? A vacation. Where is your lunatic husband, anyway?"

"John and Chiana are up at the house." Aeryn nodded over her shoulder to indicate the collection of exclusive holiday residences sheltering beneath the trees half a metra away. "Apparently they are preparing some sort of 'surprise' for me." She rolled her eyes but softened the gesture by finishing with a smile. "You know how they can be."

Rygel laughed. Crichton, with a plan to pamper Aeryn, and Chiana, the manic, ever-willing accomplice to his follies? Yes, he knew very well how they could be. "Well, if you think you can find room for one more round the table, then I reckon, by bringing me along, you can trump any surprise they have planned." Rygel suggested with a satisfied smile and a wink.

"Still got your mind on nothing but the next meal, I see," Aeryn gently teased, watching D'Argo attentively as he attempted to make a castle from the dry sand. It was, of course, a futile activity. The castle was ultimately doomed to oblivion at the hands of the sea. But then again, Rygel reflected, couldn't much the same be said of so much of what filled his own days?

"He's a fine boy." Rygel remarked, changing the subject. The problem was, lately, that he'd had his mind on so much else, mostly matters of state, that thoughts of the next good meal had scarcely got a look-in. But if Chiana was cooking, then tonight promised to be good enough to make up for some of those lost dinners.

"Thank you," Aeryn replied. Rygel paused and regarded her carefully, pondering how much she'd changed since they'd first met, how much they'd both changed. A simple compliment to her, a gracious thank you to him, both would have been impossible for either of them back then. He remembered once viciously biting her arm and her responding that he would die at the hands of a Peacekeeper.

"He's got my nose," Rygel commented. Aeryn grunted but otherwise remained silent.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, the sounds of the sea washing against the shore broken by the distant, joyful shouts of other holidaymakers. The absence of anyone making any demands of him was blissful.

"Your guards are hilarious," Aeryn chuckled after some macrots. She was side-eying one example, 50 motras away, who was failing miserably to inconspicuously dawdle past them close enough so that he could eavesdrop on the conversation that they hadn't been having.

"I thought you'd appreciate them," Rygel sniggered back.

"They are going to have a conniption when we head indoors." She whispered, deliberately quietly enough so that the soldier wouldn't overhear their intention.

"Did you learn that word from Crichton?" Rygel asked, surprised by the unfamiliar word. Aeryn raised a haughty eyebrow at him. He shrugged. It wasn't important anyway.

"Ready for dinner?" she asked, ignoring his question. "It's probably just grolack… again." She grinned and arched her eyebrows, doubtless fully aware of how much he loved Chiana's grolack.

"I thought you'd never ask," he grinned back.

The trio began to make their way up the beach towards the gently wafting trees and the bungalows beyond, Rygel holding D'Argo's hand whilst Aeryn carried their accoutrements.

"I still think you should have called him Rygel." The Dominar remarked casually. Aeryn snorted and then laughed in reply, flashing him a brief but radiant smile.

"Hmm. Maybe for her?" Aeryn patted her bump to indicate her unborn daughter.

Rygel chuckled, smiled back and squeezed D'Argo's hand lightly as they entered the shade of the trees. He couldn't remember when he'd last heard someone give an honest, joyful laugh. Yes, he reckoned the next few days promised to be just about perfect.

The end


End file.
